Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Here’s What Happens When One Person In A Room Has COVID-19 – 2oceansvibe News

[imagesource:here]

During the pandemic, weve been encouraged to adhere to physical distancing in restaurants and office spaces to limit the spread of the virus.

The rule of thumb is at least two metres between each person, desk, or chair.

Weve also been told that the risk increases in indoor spaces.

As the months have rolled on, scientists have been able to collect more data, leading to more accurate risk assessments.

Per Fast Company, John Bush, a professor of applied mathematics at MIT, says that the rules that weve been sticking too arent as effective as we thought they were.

Bush, alongside his MIT colleague Martin Z. Bazant, has created acomplex mathematical model, which simulates the fluid dynamics of virus-loaded respiratory droplets in any space, from a small kitchen to a massive concert hall.

To make things simpler for those of us who die a little inside when confronted with mathematics in general, let alone the complicated kind, they converted their findings into an online tool that anyone can use to judge COVID-19 risk scenarios.

If you visit the website, youll fill out some basic information about your space.

The tool assumes one person in a room with you has COVID-19. Variables that youll fill in include:

Whats the square footage? Whats the height of the ceiling? How about the HVAC systemis it a standard domestic furnace or does it have a fancy HEPA filter? Whats the humidity? Is a window open?

The variables also include all sorts of details about human behavior: How many other people are there with you? Are they wearing masks? Cotton or surgical? Do they wear masks properly or pull them down their face a bit? Are they whispering or singing?

I took a random listing for a 467m commercial property from a real estate website, with a 70m open-plan office space which seats 35 people.

Well be using the open-plan office space with a standard air conditioning system to work things out. The room would be filled to capacity with employees who take their masks off and talk while working.

In other words, a standard office situation.

Room Specifications

Total floor area: 70m

Ceiling height: 12 metres

Ventilation: Mechanical ventilation (air conditioning)

Filtration system: residential/commercial/industrial

Recirculation rate: moderate

Relative humidity: 60% (average)

Human behaviour

Exertion level: resting (at a desk)

Respiratory level: talking (normal)

Mask type: none (while in office) / surgical cotton.

Mask fit: none

Result:

Based on this model, it should be safe for this room to have:

The two-metre distancing guideline would indicate that up to one person would be safe in this room for an indefinite period.

To summarise, if this room has 35 people, its occupants would be safe for four minutes.

Those results are pretty terrifying.

You can then tweak the system to see if the results change, by, for example, changing no masks to cotton masks at all times, or increasing the distance between employees.

Opening the windows to increase airflow also makes a difference:

Room Specifications

Total floor area: 70m

Ceiling height: 12 metres

Ventilation: Open windows

Filtration system: Open windows with fans

Recirculation rate: moderate

Relative humidity: 60% (average)

Human behaviour

Exertion level: resting (at a desk)

Respiratory level: talking (normal)

Mask type: surgical cotton worn at all times

Mask fit: 95%

Result:

Based on this model, it should be safe* for this room to have:

The two-metre distancing guideline would indicate that up to one person would be safe in this room for an indefinite period.

If this room has 35 people, its occupants should be safe for 15 minutes.

The risk decreases with additional safety measures.

Obviously, this is just a model, but it is useful for determining the safest possible environment for the people entering a space.

It also doesnt take into account sanitising measures and regular screening.

Its a highly contagious virus, and its difficult to beat, but PPE and some regular handwashing, alongside quarantining if you feel that youve come into contact with an infected person, can go a long way towards keeping yourself and others safe.

You can tinker with that MIT tool here.

[source:fastcompany]

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Here's What Happens When One Person In A Room Has COVID-19 - 2oceansvibe News

Human Behavior

If one person with you has COVID-19, how long are you safe? – Fast Company

But as the climate has turned cold and some of us have moved indoors, John Bush, a professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls such a rule of thumb dangerous and overly simplistic. Because when youre inside, microscopic droplets are trapped right alongside you in a confined space, and standing six feet away from someone doesnt stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus from floating in the air of your living room where you can potentially inhale it.

So are any of us safe indoors during the COVID-19 era? Can we go to a grocery store? Can we meet with a loved one? Bush, alongside his MIT colleague Martin Z. Bazant, have answered that question with a complex mathematical model, which simulates the fluid dynamics of virus-loaded respiratory droplets in any space, from a cozy kitchen to a gigantic concert hall.

And because the equation is far too complicated for most people to understand, they turned their findings into a free online tool. Go to this website, and you can create your own custom scenario to judge COVID-19 risks for yourself.

[Image: COVID-19 Indoor Safety Guideline]The tool assumes one person in a room with you has COVID-19. Then, it hands you an incredible amount of control to tweak the variables at play. These variables include details about the building: Whats the square footage? Whats the height of the ceiling? How about the HVAC systemis it a standard domestic furnace or does it have a fancy HEPA filter? Whats the humidity? Is a window open? The variables also include all sorts of details about human behavior: How many other people are there with you? Are they wearing masks? Cotton or surgical? Do they wear masks properly or pull them down their face a bit? Are they whispering or singing?

At first glance, all of these controls might seem overwhelming. (And they are!) But the payoff is worth it. Because the tool gives you a very clear answer of how long how many people can safely be in a space together.

Lets try an example. You just enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner in a typical 20-foot-by-20-foot dining room with a group of 10 people. People talked normally. Nobody was wearing masks since they were eating. The air was of average humidity.

Based on this model, it should be safe for this room to have: 10 people for 18 minutes. If you had simply followed a six-foot distance guideline and worn a mask, as the CDC suggests, these guests would be safe hanging out indefinitely. Which is clearly nonsensical.

But what if they were wearing masks? you ask. Good question. Lets assume no one ate and instead talked through coarse cotton masks. Cotton masks bought them two more minutes of safety. Opening the windows to increase ventilation helps more. It buys another six minutes.

However, upgrading from coarse cotton masks to surgical masks increased the number to a whopping two hours. But with a catch: If those surgical masks are worn improperly by half of the peoplesay, the masks fit loosely or the wearers noses are sticking outthe safe time plummets back down to 32 minutes. Human factors matter a lot.

Its a demonstration that wearing masks properly does help. After working on the source math behind this tool, Bush concludes that we absolutely should because its the most dramatic effect he noticed; it moves the needle in any circumstance, buying you precious minutes to stay safe. However, masks are not hazmat suits. They cannot overcome the reality of being in a small space with other people.

To prove the point, lets make that dining room bigger. In fact, lets stretch it into a 180,000-square-foot Walmart. And lets fill it with 1,000 people who are good about wearing their coarse cotton masks. The only other variable Im changing is that the air is probably a bit drier than in your home.

In these conditions, the tool says people should be safe for 68 minutesif only one person has COVID-19.

As you can see, more space helps people stay safe. Just keep this in mind: Where I live, around Chicago, as many as 1 in 15 people currently have COVID-19, so as many as 66 people in that Walmart could have COVID-19 out of 1,000. Here, we run into a shortcoming of the tool. It models a single sick person in a space, not what happens when real infection rates hit what they are now. And theres no way to tweak it accordingly.

Obviously this is just a model. Its a simulationresearchers best guess of how our world works. It isnt perfect and cannot guarantee your safety in any situation. But after using this MIT tool for more than an hour, I went from feeling comforted to feeling like things are even less safe than I thought. The model seems to suggest that, when were stuck indoors during the peak of a pandemic, the only way to stay safe out there is to try to not go out thereor let anyone inat all.

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If one person with you has COVID-19, how long are you safe? - Fast Company

Human Behavior

Taking out the trash: One man’s mission to tidy up the space environment – SpaceNews

SpaceNews correspondent Leonard David talks with space environmentalist Moriba Jah

Earth is encircled by derelict spacecraft, the remains of exploded rocket stages, and myriad bits of orbiting debris from tiny chips of paint to the lingering leftovers of past but purposeful anti-satellite tests. Collectively, such high-speed clutter and other litter-causing activities heighten the risk of damaging or short-circuiting the performance of functional spacecraft.

The debris threat is a recognized reality. Outer space has already been termed a tragedy of the commons in the making. What avenues need to be taken to curb creation of orbiting rubble, help pinpoint the prospect of space collisions, and above all become better stewards of sustaining a quality space environment?

SpaceNews contributor Leonard David discussed these issues with Moriba Jah, associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin, a specialist on space situational awareness, space traffic monitoring, and the hazard of orbital debris.

Evidence is best when it can be independently corroborated. To me, the LeoLabs issue could have happened with any other entity when opinion is just based on that entitys own data. This is the importance of crowdsourcing. Theres need for a consensus of opinions. Thats the direction we need to go in. Its bad news if we desensitize people as it could become a Chicken Little kind of thing. Soon enough people dont pay attention and say, Oh, yeah. Its another nothing burger. So my sense of urgency is lets try to independently corroborate an event and then figure out how to move forward from that. I think just getting some answer and then blurting it out will ultimately hurt the community.

There are a number of things that actually influence the motion of objects in space. Then theres a group of things that influence our perception of the motion of things in space. Things like gravity, solar flux, particulates like micrometeoroids, charged particles. Those are external things to anthropogenic space objects. Then you have control of objects, like thrusting, etc. These are the things that actually influence the motion of space objects. But by and large we dont know all those things perfectly. Our assumptions on the physics are not perfect. The observations we have are inferring behavior. The actual data is corrupted by noise and biases. This is all very nuanced. You need to apply different methods to the same data to see what the statistical consistency is. That way you gain confidence and confidence comes from independent trials. The Defense Department (DoD) does not have all the methods I have described. They have assumptions on the physics. The fact that they model everything like a sphere already says that it cant be the right answer. The objects in their catalog are modeled like a cannonball and very few of those objects actually look like that. So thats a bias. Its a systematic error in the opinion.

I started off my career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Its the best matrix organization that I ever worked for. What Ive told parts of the government is that its OK if Commerce is the project manager for civil SSA and space traffic management, but this needs to be like a matrix organization. It needs to have line manager elements that clearly Commerce has no clue about because its just not their thing. There needs to be an interagency line, because clearly the DoD has been doing this for a really long time and Commerce hasnt. There needs to be some sort of commercial entity. There needs to be academic researchers.

These should be the line elements and then Commerce should be resourced and given the responsibility. What Commerce needs is authority, responsibility, and the ability to affect change to broker deals with each of the line elements so it can operate this matrix capability for the United States. Thats the way I think this needs to work.

Of course not.

There are different people that have a stake in whats going on in space all of humanity. There cant be a single entity that shoulders the burden of the whole thing. Theres not a single government on the planet that can actually provide the continuing supervision in the absence of help from the people that they are authorizing. Government by itself cant actually meet the needs of the community in space to achieve safety, security and sustainability without the cooperation of the very same entities they are authorizing to operate in space.

I have been developing AstriaGraph, a crowdsourcing, participatory sensing network. It prevents any single source of information from being able to uniquely bias or prejudice your opinion about what happens in space. Thats what we want to get to. We use a variety of data sources. Theres strength in numbers.

I like making an analogy to the ocean. A lot of the items in the oceans can be cleaned up, but things like microplastics are going to be there forever. I think people need to accept that we need to learn how to live within our own filth. A pristine space environment through cleaning will never happen. We need to accept that as reality.

Let me put it in current pandemic terms. How do we flatten the curve on the growth and spread of space debris? The biggest issue is lack of compliance, the equivalent of people not wearing masks and not social distancing. How do we incentivize people to actually comply with guidelines? There are a few things that we can remove out of the way because they are ticking time bombs, super-spreader events such as rocket bodies [that can potentially explode].

Before anything else, we need to come up with a global definition of what carrying capacity in orbit means. Just like theres carrying capacity for ecosystems, for highways, what is the equivalent carrying capacity for any given orbit regime? We should also come up with a definition for something like a space traffic footprint which is loosely the burden that anything has on sustainability, the safety of other things in space. No single country can just use up the carrying capacity of the orbit because it doesnt belong to any country. Its a shared resource. We have to come up with an orbital resource management program, to manage and allocate capacity. Those are the sorts of conversations that can underwrite sensible legislation. But without the sustainability metric, we just dont get there.

If every country is just free to do whatever it wants in space, and we dont have modes of behavior to help manage the common resource, then yes, eventually, were going to have a tragedy of the commons. Thats just going to happen.

Because Im coming to this in part as a space environmentalist, lets minimize or eliminate single-use satellites. We should have some sort of capability to reuse and recycle objects in space. On-orbit servicing, reuse, recycling services to me is critical in the way that humanity needs to evolve in its use of outer space. But theres a caveat. We need to also minimize misinterpretation. If somebody comes within close proximity of somebody else, they may feel its a threat and claim self-defense. So these are real human behaviors that weve displayed on Earth that we need to apply to space, so that we can forecast this a bit and try to prevent these things from happening.

I am a self-titled space environmentalist. I am not saying that tomorrow something cataclysmic is going to happen. But on our current path, space will become unusable if we do nothing different. Our behavior has not been so good for oceans, the atmosphere and climate. Space is suffering that. We are still at a point where we can do something about it. Environmental protection needs to be extended to near-Earth space for sure. That needs to be underscored. I just dont want to be an alarmist. I just want to be a realist.

This article originally appeared in the Nov. 16, 2020 issue of SpaceNews magazine.

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Taking out the trash: One man's mission to tidy up the space environment - SpaceNews

Human Behavior

When will sports stadiums be full again? Dr. Anthony Fauci gives a timeline – Yahoo Sports

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the countrys foremost authority on the COVID-19 pandemic, told Yahoo Sports on Monday that its unlikely NBA teams can host full-capacity crowds during the 2020-21 season.

Fauci, in a phone interview, said unrestricted capacities at sports stadiums will be among the last thing[s] that you're gonna see as the United States pushes toward the end of the pandemic in 2021.

When asked about the possibility of full, 20,000-seat NBA arenas in July, when the postseason is scheduled to conclude, Fauci said: Ah, I think that'll be cutting it close.

The return of tightly-packed crowds will depend on a variety of factors, public health experts say, from human behavior to uptake of soon-to-be-approved COVID-19 vaccines.

We're gonna be vaccinating the highest-priority people [from] the end of December through January, February, March, Fauci said. By the time you get to the general public, the people who'll be going to the basketball games, who don't have any underlying conditions, that's gonna be starting the end of April, May, June. So it probably will be well into the end of the summer before you can really feel comfortable [with full sports stadiums] if a lot of people get vaccinated. I don't think we're going to be that normal in July. I think it probably would be by the end of the summer.

When asked about full NFL stadiums in September, Fauci said: Oh, that's possible. I think that's possible.

Public health officials, however, qualify all future projections with several caveats. The timeline of a return to normalcy, which will double as a return to sports normalcy, will depend on whether the preliminary results of vaccine trials hold up in final data; and whether vaccine distribution goes as planned; and whether the American public is willing to get vaccinated. Surveys have suggested that roughly half of U.S. adults might not be though more recent research indicates skepticism could be waning.

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Having an efficacious vaccine in and of itself doesn't get us out of this difficult situation we're in, Fauci said. But an efficacious vaccine that's widely utilized could get us to a point where we're really approaching normality.

We could get there by the end of the summer, and as we get into the fall of next year, Fauci continued. But if 50% of the people say, You know, I don't want to get vaccinated, then it's gonna take considerably longer than that.

There is no agreed-upon target, no golden number, no specific percentage of the U.S. population that must be vaccinated for normalcy to return. Fauci pegged it at somewhere between 75 and 85 percent. Other experts expect it to be much lower. And Fauci clarified that a failure to clear that threshold would not mean that normalcy will never return it just would take longer to get there, he said, that's all.

The only thing public health experts concur on is that the virus wont just disappear. And that the end, therefore, will be slow. It's not like we're gonna turn off the light, and the virus is gone, and the world can go back, Dr. Tom Farley, Philadelphias health commissioner, told Yahoo Sports. It's going to have a very long tail to it.

The reopening of sporting events and other large gatherings will therefore be gradual. It will be a continued dial-back, hopefully, on things like capacities, Dr. Allison Arwady, Chicagos public health commissioner, told Yahoo Sports. She and other experts envisioned a cautious, step-by-step easing of restrictions sometime in 2021. Sports teams would, for example, ramp up to 25% capacity; then spend a few weeks monitoring data trends; and only then, if case counts, transmission rates and other indicators hold relatively steady, would they ramp up again.

The general approach is, you release a set of restrictions, and then see if that works, Farley said. Because there's so much guesswork. So if you go four weeks, and there's no increase in virus activity, well then you can go and do the next set.

COVID-adjusted stadium capacities, in most cases, will depend on city, county and state governments, which have the authority to limit gathering sizes. Leagues and teams may institute their own rules, but also must adhere to local guidelines. In some cases, like Floridas, full sports stadiums are already permissible but the states three NFL teams the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Miami Dolphins and Jacksonville Jaguars have all independently limited capacity significantly. In many other cases, including New York and California, no fans are permitted whatsoever.

Professional leagues have taken different approaches to operating within those local guidelines. The NFL has largely left the devising of protocols to individual teams. With Texas allowing stadiums to operate at 50% capacity, the Dallas Cowboys welcomed 30,048 fans to AT&T Stadium on Thanksgiving. The San Francisco 49ers, meanwhile, arent even allowed to play at Levis Stadium.

NBA teams are also restricted to varying degrees. Some, like the Los Angeles Lakers, have announced that home games will be held without fans until further notice. Others, like the Utah Jazz, will open their arena to 1,500 [fans] in the lower bowl only and limited seating on the suite level when the season begins on Dec. 22.

The NBA, though, has also distributed a memo to teams outlining a set of uniform league-wide standards for fan attendance. They include requirements for pre-arrival or upon-arrival symptom and exposure surveys; for mask-wearing at all times except when actively eating or drinking; for physical distancing, both between ticket parties and between fans and the court; and even for testing.

Fans seated within 30 feet of the court, the document reads, would be required to undergo and return a negative coronavirus test that is either (1) a PCR or equivalent test sampled no more than two days prior to the game tip off; or (2) an NBA-approved rapid test sampled the day of the game.

The memo, which was obtained by Yahoo Sports, does not cap attendance by percentage or number. It does, however, detail protocols for concessions and concourse areas. And, crucially, it states: Because of the rapidly evolving coronavirus situation, we expect that these rules may be modified during the season in order to ensure continued alignment with the current public health situation, scientific knowledge about the virus, and technologies that could enable more fans to safely attend NBA games.

As the pandemic abates sometime in 2021, every aspect of the sports fan experience will evolve with it. The progression to full stadiums will be a major piece of that evolution, but not the only one. Some teams have invested in technology whether for testing, or streamlined entry plans, or contactless concessions that could stick around.

And even when local governments do allow stadiums to fill, especially indoor ones even when life has returned to normal I think we should be wearing masks as long as there is any of this [virus] around, Fauci said. Because it's an easy thing to do.

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Human Behavior

Hospital data, capacity will play major role in ‘Winter Plan’ for COVID-19 in NY: Here’s what else will happen – FingerLakes1.com

On Monday, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the components and metrics that will be used to determine the states response to the Coronavirus Pandemic during its Winter Phase.

Cases have been surging in recent days, and with the holiday season here state leaders are concerned that there will be a spike on top of a spike, which is sentiment echoed by CDC leaders.

The states positive rate in focus areas (which includes Monroe and Onondaga counties) was 6.2%, with a statewide positivity rate of 4.02% without them. Altogether it brought the positivity rate to 4.57%. There were 54 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, and 160 new hospitalizations, as well as 14 new admissions to ICU beds.

Hospitals were a big component of the Winter Phase response plan. Heres a look at how this shapes up.

Governor Cuomo says the state will shift focus to number of hospitalizations and hospital capacity in yellow, orange, red zones. Hospitalization rate, death rate, case rate, available hospital beds, available ICU beds, and available staff all will be added to the metrics considered for when different communities reach various zones of limited commercial activity.

During the briefing Cuomo said he expects it to take 7-10 days for the specifics to be released on this front Partly because of the lag in infections post-Thanksgiving gatherings. He said state leaders will also meet with hospital administrators in the coming days to get an understanding of the data and forecast.

For hospitals, here is what Governor Coumo says they will be expected to do:

A hospital capacity emergency tracking system will be launched in the coming days.

All arms of government in the state will be working to increase gross testing, and simultaneously balance distribution. This includes healthcare workers, nursing homes, schools, essential workers, business professionals, personal services testing, and general population of students returning or traveling.

Theres not enough tests to go around I get it, Cuomo said. But we have to be fair about distribution.

All of the experts say schools are safer than the surrounding communities, Cuomo said. Testing focus will be on schools that fall into various zones, and will be amplified as necessary. Pool testing will be allowed, and testing out will still be permitted. School districts will be allowed to exceed the 20% testing requirement, but the surrounding community will have to maintain all other mandated testing levels for nursing homes, essential workers, and other important groups simultaneously.

We have a mandatory close level for school districts and they can close at lower levels, but our advice is that you dont, Cuomo said. We believe in keeping especially K-8 open.

Governor Cuomo called the impact small gatherings are having on virus transmission a dramatic shift from the early days of the Coronavirus Pandemic. It now accounts for 65% of total transmission of the virus. Its an adaptation of social behavior to circumstance, Cuomo said. He outlined a number of other states that have the 10 or fewer rule in place. This is a nationwide problem. I understand the people say they have COVID fatigue. The truth is that Government doesnt have the ability to monitor [your home], but its a matter of public health and safety that people do not gather at home, or elsewhere. We have to communicate this to people the same way we communicated mask-wearing.

A new media campaign will begin in the coming days to drive this home point. The Governor spoke to the fact that its not political both Republicans and Democrats agree that small gatherings should not be happening.

Vaccine delivery could start in the next few weeks. The process will be built around fairness, equity, and safety. Governor Cuomo says it will be an inclusive process that includes outreach to Black, Brown, and poor communities. Vaccine critical mass is still months away. Until it reaches there operate at maximum possible level that is safe, he said. Youll continue to see these numbers increase, probably until mid-January. You have not yet seen the effects of Thanksgiving. Youll see the effects a week out from today. I expect those numbers to keep going up. I would say you start to see a stabilization in mid-January, at an increased rate from the holiday season. The rate will be much higher than it is today. You wont see a real end until the vaccine hits critical mass.

Cuomo says that wont be until late-spring or early-summer in 2021. New York is doing better than almost any other state by the numbers. New York is better prepared than any other state. And its all in our control, he added. This is all a function of human behavior, social action, and social patterns.

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Hospital data, capacity will play major role in 'Winter Plan' for COVID-19 in NY: Here's what else will happen - FingerLakes1.com

Human Behavior

In praise of Janet Yellen the Economist – The Register-Guard

Paul Krugman| The New York Times

Its hard to overstate the enthusiasm among economists over Joe Bidens selection of Janet Yellen as the next secretary of the Treasury. Some of this enthusiasm reflects the groundbreaking nature of her appointment. She wont just be the first woman to hold the job; shell be the first person to have held all three of the traditional top U.S. policy positions in economics chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, chair of the Federal Reserve and now Treasury secretary.

And yes, theres a bit of payback for Donald Trump, who denied her a well-earned second term as Fed chair, reportedly in part because he thought she was too short.

But the good news about Yellen goes beyond her ridiculously distinguished career in public service. Before she held office, she was a serious researcher. And she was, in particular, one of the leading figures in an intellectual movement that helped save macroeconomics as a useful discipline when that usefulness was under both external and internal assault.

Before I get there, a word about Yellens time at the Federal Reserve, especially her time on the Feds board in the early 2010s, before she became chair.

At the time, the U.S. economy was slowly clawing its way back from the Great Recession a recovery impeded, not incidentally, by Republicans in Congress who pretended to care about national debt and imposed spending cuts that significantly hurt economic growth. But spending wasnt the only issue of debate; there were also fierce arguments about monetary policy.

Specifically, there were many people on the right condemning the Feds efforts to rescue the economy from the effects of the 2008 financial crisis. Among them, by the way, was Judy Shelton, the totally unqualified hack Trump is still trying to install on the Fed board, who warned in 2009 that the Feds actions would produce ruinous inflation. (Hint: They didnt.)

Even within the Fed, there was a division between hawks worried about inflation and doves who insisted that inflation wasnt a threat in a depressed economy, and that fighting the depression should take priority. Yellen was one of the leading doves and a 2013 analysis by The Wall Street Journal found that she had been the most accurate forecaster among Fed policymakers.

Why did she get it right? Part of the answer, Id argue, goes back to academic work she did in the 1980s.

At the time, as Ive suggested, useful macroeconomics was under attack. What I mean by useful macroeconomics was the understanding, shared by economists from John Maynard Keynes to Milton Friedman, that monetary and fiscal policy could be used to fight recessions and reduce their economic and human toll.

This understanding didnt fail the test of reality on the contrary, the experience of the early 1980s strongly confirmed the predictions of basic macroeconomics.

But useful economics was under threat.

On one side, right-wing politicians turned away from reality-based economics in favor of crank doctrines, especially the claim that governments can conjure up miraculous growth by cutting taxes on the rich. On the other side, a significant number of economists themselves rejected any role for policy in fighting recessions, claiming that there would be no need for such a role if people were acting rationally in their own interests, and that economic analysis should always assume that people are rational.

Which is where Yellen came in; she was a prominent figure in the rise of new Keynesian economics, which rested on one key insight: People arent stupid, but they arent perfectly rational and self-interested. And even a bit of realism about human behavior restores the case for aggressive policies to fight recessions. In later work Yellen would show that labor market outcomes depend a lot not just on pure dollars-and-cents calculations, but also on perceptions of fairness.

All this may sound abstruse, but I can vouch from my own experience that this work had a huge impact on many young economists basically giving them a license to be sensible.

And it seems to me that theres a direct line from the disciplined realism of Yellens academic research to her success as a policymaker. She was always someone who understood the value of data and models. Indeed, rigorous thinking becomes more, not less important in crazy times like these, when past experience offers little guidance about what we should be doing. But she also never forgot that economics is about people, who arent the emotionless, hyperrational calculating machines economists sometimes wish they were.

Now, none of this means that things will necessarily go well. The race is not to the swift, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet success to policymakers of understanding, but time and chance happen to them all. Trumps cabinet was a clown show possibly the worst cabinet in Americas history but it wasnt until 2020 that the consequences of the administrations incompetence became fully apparent.

Still, its immensely reassuring to know that economic policy will be made by someone who knows what she is doing.

Paul Krugman writes for The New York Times.

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In praise of Janet Yellen the Economist - The Register-Guard

Human Behavior

Female Hunters – Women at the Hearth and on the Hunt – SAPIENS – SAPIENS

This article was originally published atThe Conversationand has beenrepublished under Creative Commons.

For a long time, it was assumed that hunting in ancient societies was primarily carried out by men. Now a new studyadds to a body of evidence challenging this idea. The research reports the discovery of a female body buried alongside hunting tools in the Americas some 9,000 years ago.

The woman, discovered in the Andean highlands, was dubbed Wilamaya Patjxa individual six, or WPI6. She was found with her legs in a semi-flexed position, with the collection of stone tools placed carefully next to them. These included projectile pointstools that were likely used to tip lightweight spears thrown with anatlatl (also called a spear thrower). The authors argue that such projectile points were used for hunting large animals.

WPI6 was between 17 and 19 years old at time of death. It was an analysis of substances known as peptides in her teeth, which aremarkers for biological sex, that showed that she was female. There were also large mammal bones in the burial fill, demonstrating the significance of hunting in her society.

The authors of the study, published in Science Advances, also reviewed evidence of other skeletons buried around the same period in the Americas, looking specifically at graves containing similar tools associated with big-game hunting. They found that of the 27 skeletons for which sex could be determined, 41 percent were likely female.

The authors propose that this may mean that big-game hunting was indeed carried out by both men and women in hunter-gatherer groups at that time in the Americas.

This idea goes against a hypothesis, dating back to the 1960s, known as the Man the Hunter model, which is increasingly being debunked. It suggests that huntingand especially, big-game huntingwas primarily, if not exclusively, undertaken by male members of past hunter-gatherer societies.

The hypothesis is based on a few different lines of evidence. Probably most significantly, it considers recent and present-day hunter-gatherer societies to try to understand how those in the deeper past may have been organized.

The remains of the ancient woman identified as WPI6 were found at the Wilamaya Patjxa site in what is today southern Peru. Randall Haas

The stereotypical view of hunter-gatherer groups is that they involve a gendered division of labor, with men hunting and women being more likely to stay nearer to the home with young children, or to fish and forage, though even thenthere is some variation. For example, amongAgta foragers in the Philippines, women are primary hunters rather than assistants.

Some present-day hunter-gatherers still use atlatls today, and some people alsoenjoy using atlatlsin competitive throwing events, with women and children regularly taking part. Archaeologists studyingdata from these eventssuggest that atlatls may well have been equalizersfacilitating hunting by both women and men, possibly because they reduce the importance of body size and strength.

The new study further debunks the hypothesis, adding to a few previous archaeological findings. For example, at the 34,000-year-old site of Sunghir in Russia, archaeologistsdiscovered the burial of two youngsters, one of whom was likely a girl of around 9 to 11 years old. Both individuals had physical abnormalities and were buried with 16 mammoth ivory spearsan incredible offering of what were probably valuable hunting tools.

In 2017, a famous burial of a Viking warrior from Sweden, discovered early in the 20th century and long assumed to be male,was found to be biologically female. This finding caused a significant and somewhat surprising amount of debate, and points to how our own modern ideas of gender roles can affect interpretations of more recent history too.

It has been argued that distinguishing between boy jobs and girl jobs, as one former British prime minister put it, could have evolutionary advantages. For example, it can allow pregnant and lactating mothers to stay near to a home base, keeping themselves and youngsters protected from harm. But we are increasingly learning that this model is far too simplistic.

With hunting being a keystone to survival for many highly mobile hunter-gatherer groups, community-wide participation also makes good evolutionary sense. The past, as some say, is a foreign country, and the more evidence we have, the more variable human behavior looks to have been.

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Female Hunters - Women at the Hearth and on the Hunt - SAPIENS - SAPIENS

Human Behavior

Morality and COVID-19: Why some individuals continue to ignore rules about wearing face masks – Milwaukee Independent

Governments around the world have recommended or mandated various behaviors to slow the spread of COVID-19. These include staying at home, wearing face masks and practicing social distancing.

Yet individuals continue to flout these recommendations and ignore explicit rules about wearing face masks. In the U.S., U.K. and Australia, crowds have gathered closely together to protest against lockdowns. All this poses the question: Why are people not following the rules that protect not only their own health but the health of their community and nation? And how can policymakers and public health officials design better messages to encourage uptake?

How morals guide our decisions

In my latest research, I studied how people perceive the three main recommended behaviors as either right or wrong. I grounded my research on Moral Foundations Theory, which states that people judge the rightness or wrongness of behaviors along five different moral concerns or foundations.

The first is whether an action shows you care; the second is whether an action upholds standards of equality; the third is whether it shows loyalty to the group; the fourth is whether it shows deference to authority; and the last is whether it conforms to impulses and the natural way of doing things.

Some foundations are relevant to certain behaviors; others, not so much. For example, parents who are anti-vaxxers hold this view because they see vaccines as harming a childs natural immunological defenses. Although that is not true, vaccines still challenge their perception of whats natural. Likewise, when it comes to charitable giving, people donate because they see it as showing they care not because they see it as natural to do so.

One benefit of exploring which moral foundation is relevant to a certain behavior is that it offers a better understanding of how to encourage or discourage that behavior. For example, policymakers now understand that to encourage vaccinations for children, messages aimed at hesitant parents need to help them see how vaccinations can actually boost a childs natural defenses. But telling these parents that it shows you care for your child has little effect, because the caring foundation is less relevant.

Morality and COVID-19

I surveyed 1,033 Americans during the last week in April 2020, asking them how relevant each moral foundation is to staying at home, wearing face masks and practicing social distancing. I found that Americans, on the whole, associated all three behaviors with the caring and equality foundations. Indeed, staying at home when you dont need to go out shows you care about others I call this the caring foundation. But staying at home helps flatten the curve only if everyone does it the equality foundation. The same can be said for wearing face masks and social distancing.

But I also found important age differences in two other moral foundations. Younger adults felt that staying at home and wearing face masks go against their nature what I call the nature foundation. It would make sense. Younger adults are more likely to crave social interactions, and so staying at home goes against what they perceive to be natural human behavior.

Meanwhile, wearing face masks not only is uncomfortable but hides ones face, which also goes against beliefs about how human beings are supposed to socialize. Older adults, on the other hand, felt that all three behaviors show a greater value placed on communal goals and public health over personal comfort. Interestingly, the authority foundation didnt relate to any of the three behaviors, regardless of age.

Policy implications

By understanding which moral foundations are relevant, social marketers, public health officials and policymakers can design more effective appeals to get people to stay at home, wear face masks and stay 6 feet apart.

For example, because Americans see the actions as showing they care, emphasizing how those behaviors show caring will likely increase compliance. To target younger adults, who see staying at home and wearing face masks as going against the social nature of human beings, messages should suggest how these actions can actually facilitate socialization.

For example: Wearing a mask lets you stay in touch, safely. Common slogans such as Staying Apart, Together, while whimsical and a play on words, are unlikely to increase younger adults uptake, since the communal foundation is a less relevant concern for them. Those slogans may be more effective for older adults.

If governments and public health officials really want to promote staying at home, wearing face masks and practicing social distancing, they cant just say its moral to do so. They might want to learn to appeal to the relevant moral convictions of the population they are targeting.

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Morality and COVID-19: Why some individuals continue to ignore rules about wearing face masks - Milwaukee Independent

Human Behavior

Human behavior is behind second COVID wave in Massachusetts, study suggests; predicts the state could exceed – MassLive.com

As the COVID pandemic continues, more people are comfortable going to the gym, restaurants and visiting friends. But thats all contributing to the second wave in Massachusetts, a new study suggests.

The study published by a group of researchers at Northeastern, Harvard, Rutgers, and Northwestern universities said the current trajectory of COVID-19 in Massachusetts is deeply worrisome.

After dropping to a low of 200 cases per day in early July, the pandemic has resurged with a vengeance. Rates of new daily cases roughly doubled between July 1 and October 1, then again from October 1 to November 1, then again in just 10 days from November 1 to 11, reaching well over 2000 cases a day, the study says. If the current growth rate persists, the case counts would exceed 10,000 per day by December.

On Tuesday, state health officials confirmed another 2,225 coronavirus cases.

These numbers would overwhelm current hospital capacity, the study says.

But with changes, this can be reversed, the study states.

The good news, and the bad news, is that human behavior is likely driving the resurgence, the study said. This means that infections need not continue to explode in Massachusetts, but also that real changes in behavior (and policy) may be required to bring it back under control.

The study found that in April and May, less than 5% reported going to a restaurant in the past 24 hours. By October, that number increased to 15%. During that same time, less than 1% of people said they were going to the gym. In October, that number was 7%. And the number of people visiting friends or other non-household members in enclosed spaces doubled.

These patterns are not just the result of individual choices, but of policy decisions, since many of these establishments were closed in the spring, the study states.

Gov. Charlie Baker has issued a stay-at-home advisory, setting a curfew and requires businesses to close by 9:30 p.m.

Were doing much better than many other states and many other countries, but hereto weve let down our guard, he said.

But the study states this could actually be adding to the problem.

It is possible that some measures, such as limiting the hours restaurants are open, might actually make matters worse, because it may result in more people being in a restaurant at any given hour, the study states.

Mask wearing, however, has increased.

The commonwealth is reporting among the highest levels of adherence anywhere in the country, at about 80% very closely following mask-wearing guidelines.

Many have also been taking advantage of being outside, something that cant happen as frequently during the winter months.

More aggressive action now might avoid more draconian measures later, when our hospitals are beyond capacity, the study said.

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Human behavior is behind second COVID wave in Massachusetts, study suggests; predicts the state could exceed - MassLive.com

Human Behavior

Study: Lax behaviors of Mass. residents has contributed to second COVID-19 wave – Boston.com

As Massachusetts enters the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, theres one factor that could either help or hurt the spread of cases within the next few weeks: human behavior.

The key is how humans behave during this time, according to a study published by a group of researchers at Northeastern, Harvard, Rutgers, and Northwestern universities. Human behavior is cited as both the good and bad news. While behavior has aided the second wave of the virus, changes in behavior, and potentially policy handed down by lawmakers, could stop the spread, the researchers said.

Our data confirm a substantial relaxation of many of the behaviors that helped slow the spread of the disease in the spring, the study says, while also noting that researchers dont believe current restrictions will greatly stop the spread.

In taking a look at just mask wear, recent survey data collected for the state shows that Massachusetts residents have mostly adopted proper mask wearing about 80 percent of people are very closely following mask-wearing guidelines, which is among the highest numbers in the country.

However, about 1 in 5 people polled for the study indicate that they are not very closely following guidelines for mask wear.

But wearing a mask isnt enough to stop the second wave, according to David Lazer, a Northeastern professor and one of the studys authors.

The good news here is that mask wearing has increased, and is higher in Massachusetts than other states, Lazer said in an email to Boston.com. The bad news is that thats not enough. Other behaviors have relaxed quite a bit, and the result (at least partially) is the current surge of case counts. This becomes a particular concern around the holidays, which may increase inter-household physical proximity.

Over the last few weeks, Massachusetts has seen COVID-19 cases skyrocket. There were 1,785 new cases reported on Monday and 18 new deaths. Looking back to July, the state had hit a low case count of about 200 per day, the study says. That number has doubled multiple times over, from between July 1 and Oct. 1, and Oct. 1 and Nov. 1, and then exceeding 2,000 cases per day in the first 11 days of November.

If the current growth rate persists, the case counts would exceed 10,000 per day by December, the study says. Such numbers will eventually result in many hospitalizations and deaths, and a general caseload that would dramatically and adversely affect healthcare across the board, as Massachusetts hospitals would be under enormous pressure.

One of the problems is that people have become less vigilant since the spring in adhering to behaviors to help curb virus spread. The study indicates that in terms of visiting restaurants: Fewer than 5 percent of survey respondents went to one within the 24 hours prior to being polled back in April and May. In October, that number jumped to 15 percent.

People are also socializing more with people outside their households, up from 22 percent in April to 45 percent in October, the study said.

Part of this uptick is not just people themselves, but also the governments decision to keep things like restaurants and gyms open this time when they were closed during the initial surge, according to researchers.

The study also suggests that limiting hours at places like restaurants Gov. Charlie Baker imposed a curfew of 9:30 p.m. on restaurants for table service, as well as shuttering businesses like theaters, casinos, and gyms by this time could have negative effects, with the idea that more people could be in these spaces during the hours theyre open.

The researchers determined instead that stricter policies or closures could be needed to make the coming months less painful.

The effectiveness of behavior changes in crushing the curve in the spring, and the apparent importance of restaurants, gyms, and other settings that people congregate, highlights the potential for aggressive policy interventions to change our behaviors to reduce the spread, the study said. It is unlikely that the current measures of the Massachusetts government will substantially bend the growth curve of the disease.

Massachusetts is, of course, not alone in its second surge. Cases have drastically increased throughout the country and in Europe, where, in some countries, lockdowns went into effect late last month.

Massachusetts is on a similar trajectory, just lagging a few weeks, the study said.

But regardless of whether those lockdowns are enacted here, people can change their behavior of their own free will if theyre serious about curbing the effects of virus spread, the researchers noted.

The approaching holidays make this precisely the right time to get serious about behavior change, the study reads. The risk, but also the opportunity, is undeniable.

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Study: Lax behaviors of Mass. residents has contributed to second COVID-19 wave - Boston.com